I’m primarily an embedded engineer. As such I’m not very familiar with mobile app development to enable the control of an embedded system via Bluetooth. Much of the development in Bluetooth connectivity is based on the newer 4.0 BLE profiles. The Anaren app builder that works with their BLE module. The controls were sluggish and the Bluetooth connection seemed unreliable. Part of this may be a consequence of the lower data rates supported by BLE as opposed to the higher Bluetooth Classic data rates. I started their method of exporting the app to a more advanced tool but stopped when I realized it would take man-weeks to learn how to use it. I also tried ST’s BlueSTSDK. The example application compiles and functions well but it would take more time than I wanted to deconstruct the app and learn how to build my own app.
My search for a simpler and faster solution led me to an mbed example application. It uses the HC-05 Bluetooth classic module that implements the Serial Port Profile. For constructing the app MIT’s App Inventor is used. I spent about two days building an app that provided a useful user interface for an embedded target. I’ll suffer my loss of programmer’s pride for using the scratch like programming method for the benefit of the time saved in producing the app.